Peter Temple: An Iron Rose

I got up and went to the window. Cotter had the Land Rover passenger door open and was poking through the mess inside.

‘Your man got a warrant?’ I said.

‘Coming to that,’ Shea said. He took a folded piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. ‘Here’s your copy.’

‘Got something in mind?’ I said.

It was Shea’s turn to say nothing, just look at me, not very interested.

I heard the sound of a vehicle, then another car nosed around the corner of the house. Two men and a woman.

‘The gang’s all here,’ I said. ‘Go for your life.’

Shea coughed. ‘I’m going to ask you to come into town for an interview. When we’re finished here. The young fella too. Don’t want you to talk to him before. Okay? So you can’t travel with him. He can come with me or you can make some other arrangement, get a friend. You’re entitled to be represented. Kid’s gotta have someone with him. You don’t want to come of your own accord, well, we do it the other way. Believe me.’

There wasn’t a way around this. ‘Let me explain this to Lew,’ I said.

Shea nodded. We went over to the smithy. Lew was where I’d left him, puzzled and frightened. I sat down next to him.

‘Lew,’ I said, ‘listen, mate. They’re going to search the place. Then they want us to go into town so they can ask us some more questions. They’ll record everything. You’ll have a lawyer with you, just so everything’s done right. All right?’

‘We told them,’ Lew said.

‘I know. It’s just the way they do it. I’ll tell you about it later. I’m going to arrange for your lawyer now. We can’t talk to each other again before the interviews. I’ll be there when you finish.’

He looked at me, looked away, just a child again in a world suddenly turned from stone to water. He was on the edge of tears. I gave him a little punch in the arm. ‘Mate, this’ll be over in next to no time. Then we can have a feed, get some sleep. Hold on. Right?’

He moved his head, more tremble than a nod. He was exhausted.

I rang the lawyer who’d handled my father’s estate. ‘You’re better off with someone who specialises in crim,’ he said. ‘What’s your number?’

I waited by the phone. A tall cop came in, opened the Ned Kelly stove and poked around in the ashes. When he’d finished, he started on the chest of drawers, working from bottom to top like a burglar.

The phone rang.

‘Mr Faraday?’

I said yes.

‘I’m Laura Randall.’ Deep voice. ‘Mike Sherman said you had a matter.’

I told her what was happening.

She said nothing until I’d finished. Then she said, ‘Ring me just before you leave. I’ll meet you there.’

The search took nearly two hours: house, smithy, all the outbuildings. When they’d finished, the five of them had a conference outside. Shea came into the office and said, no expression, ‘Firearm on the premises.’

I nodded.

‘.38 Colt Python.’

I nodded again.

‘Licence?’

‘No.’

‘Unlicensed firearm?’

I savoured the moment. ‘Special permit.’

‘Special permit. That’s for what reason?’

I said, ‘See if they’ll tell you, Detective Sergeant.’

He didn’t like this. ‘I will. I will.’

When they’d bagged the gun we set off for town, Shea and Cotter in front with Lewis, then me in the Land Rover, then the other car. It began to rain as we crested the last hump of the Great Dividing Range, all sixty metres of it.

I parked behind Shea and Cotter in front of the police station, an old two-storey redbrick building with an ugly new annexe. The other cops drove through an entrance marked of f icial par king onl y.

As I got out, the door of a BMW on the other side of the narrow street opened and a tall woman with dark hair pulled back in a loose ponytail got out. She took a leather briefcase out of the back seat and came over.

‘Mr Faraday?’ she said. ‘Laura Randall.’ Her breath was steam in the cold afternoon. She was in her thirties, thin, plain, pale skin, faintly amused twist to her mouth. The clothes were expensive: brown leather bomber jacket, dark tartan trousers over gleaming boots.

We shook hands. Shea, Cotter and Lew were out of the car, standing on the pavement. Cotter had his hands in his pockets and a cigarette in his mouth. He looked like a bouncer on his break.

I moved around so that I had my back to them. ‘That’s your client,’ I said. ‘The young fella. He told them the story this morning. He doesn’t know anything. The fat one over there, Shea, he’s hinting he thinks the kid and I might be in it, killed Ned for the inheritance. Maybe more than just friends, too.’

She looked me hard in the eyes. ‘Sexually involved?’ she said. ‘Are you?’

‘Only with the opposite sex,’ I said. ‘And that infrequently.’ She didn’t smile.

I said, ‘There’s nothing like that. Lew’s a good kid, been messed around by his mother. His grandfather was my father’s best friend.’ I paused. ‘He was my best friend too.’

Laura Randall said, ‘You need to understand, if he makes an admission in this interview, they’ll call me as a witness. I won’t be able to represent him.’

I shook my head. ‘Can’t happen. Nothing to admit. I just want someone with him, make him feel he’s not alone with these blokes.’

‘You’ll need someone with you too,’ she said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not with this lot. I’ve been on fishing trips with pros.’

She gave me an interested look. ‘Talk to you later,’ she said. ‘Mr Faraday.’

‘Ms Randall.’ To the dog, I said, ‘Stay.’

It was dark before we got home and we were both staring-eyed with fatigue. After I switched off the engine, we sat in silence for a while. Finally, I shook myself into action. ‘Okay. Lew, that’s over. There’s two big pies in the top rack of the freezer. Bang them in the microwave, twenty minutes on defrost. I’ll get the fire going.’

We ate lamb pies, made for me by the lady down the road, in front of the fire, watching football in Perth on television. Lew drank half a glass of beer. I drank half a bottle of red. He had barely stopped chewing when his head fell onto his shoulder. I made the bed in the spare room, put a pair of pyjamas on the pillow, woke him and pushed him off to bed. Then I started work on the second half of the bottle.

In the night, far from dawn, I sat up, fully awake, swept the blankets from my legs. Deep in sleep, some noise had alarmed me. Not the wind nagging at the guttering and the loose tiles, shaking the windows, making the trees groan like old men being massaged. Not the occasional slash of rain hitting the panes like pebbles. Not the house timbers creaking and ticking and uttering tiny screeches, not the plumbing gargling and knocking, not the creatures moving in the roof.

Something else.

When I’d first come from Melbourne, to my father’s house at the crossroads, the old life’s burden of fear and vigilance heavy on my back, I’d sat in the dark in every room in turn, eyes closed, listening, pigeonholing sounds. And I had slept fitfully for weeks until I knew every night noise of the place. Only then was I sure that I would hear the sounds that I was always listening for: a vehicle stopping on the road or in the lane, a squeak of the new gravel I’d put around the house, the thin complaint of a window being forced.

Now I heard the sound again: the flat, hard smack of a door slamming.

It was the smithy door. Once or twice a year I’d forget to slide the bolt. The wind would gradually prise the door open, then slam it triumphantly and start prising again.

I got up and went into the black, wet night. The dog came from nowhere to join me, silently.